(i ripped this off wikipedia real fast so sorry if it's lib)

In October 1776, the Public Universal Friend contracted an epidemic disease and was bedridden and near death with a high fever. Their family summoned a doctor from Attleboro, six miles away, and neighbors kept up a death-watch at night. The fever broke after several days. The Friend later reported that [deadname redacted] had died, receiving revelations from God through two archangels who proclaimed there was "Room, Room, Room, in the many Mansions of eternal glory for Thee and for everyone". The Friend further said that [deadname redacted]'s soul had ascended to heaven and the body had been reanimated with a new spirit charged by God with preaching his word, that of the "Publick Universal Friend", describing that name in the words of Isaiah 62:2 as "a new name which the mouth of the Lord hath named".

From that time on, the Friend refused to answer to their deadname, ignoring or chastising those who insisted on using it. When visitors asked if it was the name of the person they were addressing, the Friend simply quoted Luke 23:3 ("thou sayest it").  Identifying as neither male nor female, the Friend asked not to be referred to with gendered pronouns. Followers respected these wishes; they referred only to "the Public Universal Friend" or short forms such as "the Friend" or "P.U.F.", and many avoided gender-specific pronouns even in private diaries. When someone asked if the Friend was male or female, the preacher replied "I am that I am", saying the same thing to a man who criticized the Friend's manner of dress (adding, in the latter case, "there is nothing indecent or improper in my dress or appearance; I am not accountable to mortals").

editorial note: I think this is a very cool story and I really love hearing it. We've been around forever and we've been doing variations of this forever. It's really beautiful


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  • imogen_underscore [it/its, she/her]
    ·
    18 hours ago

    in the same boat lol. i picked up saying "rocks" a good while ago though, i just find it to be such a fun americanism. "rules" is definitely used like a handful of times or more in orange book and i have begun using that too as a result.

    on a personal note, i try not to overanalyze whether I'm saying stuff "ironically" or not these days, if something is fun to say I just allow myself to say it. autism is like that and overthinking the irony aspect can come a little close to performing a value judgement for me which I wanna avoid, like trying not to police my own innocuous language and instead just realizing it's nbd either way. I'm anti-the concept of irony anyway at least in the sense it's been used online for the last while and think we need to transcend it lol.

    • ashinadash [she/her]
      ·
      15 hours ago

      Orange book my beloved cat-trans I try not to think a lot about that either though, I tried jettisoning "rocks/rules" from my vocab but not stimming with it actually kinda sucked, so here I am tbh. Death to irony!